Author: George Iype
Publication: Rediff
on Net
Date: July 14, 2000
The most extreme militant
outfit that has spread its tentacles from Kashmir to Kanyakumari is the
Lashkar-e-Toiba or "the army of faithful." The LeT has trained hundreds
of Muslim youths in Pakistan and the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The military
wing of Pakistan's religious university, the Dawat-ul-Irshad, it was founded
by Professor Hafiz Mohammad Saeed.
Dawat-ul-Irshad has 500
offices in Pakistan, 40 teachers and around 800 students, who are between
eight and 20 years of age. They are taught to propagate Islam, embrace
militancy and prepare for jihad.
During a three-day annual
congregation of LeT members at Muridke near Lahore last September, Saeed
had proclaimed that the organisation's campaign in Hyderabad and Junagadh
were among its highest priorities.
LeT's supreme ideologue
Abdul Rahman Makki went a step ahead and announced that the outfit had
opened a new unit in Hyderabad to liberate the Indian city from what he
called "un-Islamic Indian rule."
The Hyderabad police
have arrested a number of ISI agents who work for the LeT. All over India,
45 ISI cells have been smashed and 161 activists arrested in the past five
years.
In September 1998, the
police arrested three Pakistani agents -- Mohammed Saleem Junaid, Mohammed
Shafiq and Farooq Ahmed. They belonged to the LeT. Thirteen of their supporters,
most of them Hyderabadi boys, were also picked up. They were planning serial
bomb blasts in Hyderabad on the Ganesh Chathurti day.
Since then, there has
been no major LeT activity in the city. But the police say there are a
number of "resident agents" at large.
